Foodservice Footprint shutterstock_1464774203 Just Eat trials takeaway box made with seaweed Foodservice News and Information Out of Home sector news  news-email

Just Eat trials takeaway box made with seaweed

Just Eat has launched a seaweed-lined takeaway box that it says is fully recyclable and can decompose in four weeks in a home compost.

The cardboard container, which is made from tree and grass pulp with a seaweed lining, has been designed to be water-resistant and greaseproof to cope with wet food.

Just Eat has partnered with Notpla to test the box with three restaurant partners in London with the aim of assessing the feasibility of introducing it more widely, replacing the 500 million plastic takeaway boxes currently used across the UK takeaway industry each year.

Although Just Eat has yet to carry out a full life cycle analysis of the takeaway box it said in-house trials from Notpla showed the packaging degraded within four weeks. It added that the box is also considered recyclable according to CPI Recyclability Guidelines for paper and cartonboard recyclability.

“With hundreds of millions of takeaway meals ordered through delivery firms every year, the industry must make the development of sustainable, non-harmful packaging solutions a top priority,” said Friends of the Earth plastic campaigner Tony Bosworth. “While waste reduction and the use of reusables should be the ultimate goal, we hope this is a great step on that journey.”

Other campaign groups are pushing for an immediate reduction of all single-use materials. “This discussion isn’t about reuse versus single-use but whether we can continue to exploit the planet’s resources to continue supporting the current ‘take-use-dispose’ model,” WWF sustainable materials specialist Paula Chin told the recent Foodservice Packaging Association environment seminar in London.

Robin Clark, Just Eat’s business partnerships director, has previously told Footprint that the economics of switching to reusable takeaway boxes don’t yet stack up.

Just Eat and Notpla have previously collaborated to replace single-use plastic sachets with seaweed sachets.

The campaign group, A Plastic Planet, has recently launched a new campaign to draw attention to the 855 billion plastic sachets used globally each year that is says are almost never recycled.